KIEV (AFP)---About a hundred people gathered in the
Ukrainian capital Kiev on Sunday to commemorate one of the most infamous massacres of East European Jews during World War II, the Babi Yar massacre.

Relatives of the victims laid flowers, candles and small stones
according to Jewish tradition at a monument formed in the shape of a menorah, or seven-branched candelabrum.

Prayers were said by Ukrainian chief rabbi Yaacov Blaykh.

On September 29-30, 1941 nearly 34,000 Jews were shot at Babi Yar (Woman’s Ravine) by German forces and their local collaborators.

Up to 60,000 more people were killed there up to 1943, among them Jews, Roma, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war.

Eighty-six-year-old Debora Averbukh said she escaped the massacre as she and fellow university students had been evacuated to Uzbekistan, but that both her parents had been killed at Babi Yar.

"I learnt about my parents’ death from a postcard I received from the son of our neighbours in Kiev -- it was only possible for a child to do such a thing with impunity," she told AFP.

Vladlen Portniko, who lost his grandparents at Babi Yar, said he had been coming to commemorate the massacre since 1989.

"I think we need to show in our everyday life that all nations are equal, so as to prevent anything like Babi Yar happening again," he said.